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The grids are unfiltered, randomised brain dumps and rambling thoughts.

Disorder often stimulates us with new ideas and creative ways of doing things.

They are messy, and I feel like I should try to make some order from this, and so the process is chaos -> order.

Brian Eno has spoken about his use of cards (in music composition), containing instructions or rules, to help structure these rambling thoughts, and compose something interesting.

So I feel I should be structuring the grids into something more ordered.

Most of my grid drawings follow themes, and these repeat within grids.

To try to structure the grids I’ve come up with a colour coding system, so I use a different colour palette depending on the theme. This way a colour structure appears within the grids, and this becomes useful – and interesting – when many grids are displayed together, which is what I’m planning to do for the Clutter show.

Colour code:

  1. Trees & buildings – silver, grey, black, blue
  2. Concepts – gold, yellows, black, ochres
  3. People – red, pinks, black, purples
  4. Nature – green, light green, black, blue
  5. Slogans/ opinions – black, grey
  6. Politics – greys, blue
  7. Diaristic – greys
  8. Text – black, grey
  9. Textures – grey
  10. Body – reds
  11. Thoughts & feelings – yellow, grey
  12. Philosophy – brown & black
  13. Food and meals – black, grey

I also don’t think the grids are messy random journals, I think they are actually the finished work. I like to make one in a day, and so it’s a reflection or snapshot of that moment and my emotional state, and the things in my head. Finishing one gives me a sense of completeness.

So they work as individual items, but using this colour coding system, they can also work as part of a bigger structure, though in different ways to how they work individually.


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I looked into the practice of “Journaling”, which I think is relevant to my making grid drawings …

There are many journaling methods and planning methods that tell you to “empty your mind onto a page,” or “perform a mind dump”. This is usually a first step on the way to some other goal: planning your week, dealing with anxiety or finding a direction in life, etc. From GTD to Morning Pages everyone expects you to press a hidden button and just directly dump everything on your mind onto your journal.

The idea is that by emptying your mind onto a page you will be able to free more “processing power” to more high level thinking and planning. Your mind will be free of noise, will be relieved of the need to track and remember things, and will be able to do what you really need it to do: make decisions, plan ahead, come up with new ideas, allow you to be creative.

My grids are a superficial and quick way of expressing my thoughts at a particular moment. Perhaps they are therapeutic …

Removing unwanted thoughts from my head
Reducing my anxiety
Making space in my head


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Pencil and tempera on a lined notebook. Thoughts and feelings on today.


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